OXFORD – No. 16 Ole Miss clinched a series win on Saturday and remained in first place in the SEC West.

That it did so in a game Arkansas scored four runs in the top of first inning, only to let Ole Miss score seven unanswered runs the rest of the way, only furthers the belief that the Rebels are a little bit different than previous editions.

“We just got to keep playing the way we are,” pitcher Christian Trent said after the Rebels’ 7-4 win. “We’re a good team and I think we definitely have what it takes to go pretty deep into the year, Omaha and stuff like that. And even win the SEC.”

Ole Miss (35-13, 15-8 SEC) had 12 hits from eight different batters in front of an announced crowd of 9,416 at Swayze Field and will go for the sweep against Arkansas today (1:30 p.m., CSS). The Rebels are up two games on Alabama (13-10) in the SEC West and a game and change on LSU (13-9-1).

For the second day in a row, the Ole Miss starting pitcher did not have his best stuff early. After retiring the first batter, Trent (7-0) gave up six-straight singles that produced four runs for the Razorbacks. None of the balls were hit extremely hard, but Arkansas clearly made it a point to attack anything Trent threw near the strike zone.

“They were hitting everything I was throwing,” Trent said. “I gave up a couple of hits that were bad pitches, but they just came up swinging.”

But whatever momentum Arkansas generated from the first inning, especially after Friday’s 3-2 loss, was almost immediately squandered. Brantley Bell and Sikes Orvis each had RBI singles in a three-run bottom of the first inning. The Rebels took the lead for good in the fourth after J.B. Woodman had a bases-loaded single that ended up scoring two, and Auston Bousfield hit a sacrifice fly. Orvis finished things off with a solo home run in the fifth, his team-leading 12th bomb of the season.

“A lot of it is just confidence,” said catcher Will Allen, who was 3-for-4 with a run scored. “When we get down 4-0 in the first, nobody was freaking out or anything. We had all the confidence in the world that we were going to score all those runs back for Christian.”

Meanwhile, the Arkansas offense was getting nothing. Trent pitched into the fifth inning, giving up nine total hits and striking out four batters. Scott Weathersby inherited a two-on, no-out jam in the sixth, but kept everyone where they were. Josh Laxer pitched the ninth for his fifth save of the season.

“In this league, you’re going to have innings like that where it just doesn’t go your way,” pitching coach Carl Lafferty said. “The difference in guys that are really elite in this league is they are the ones that can come up and do what Christian did, which is put up four more zeroes for us and keep us in the game.”